Tag Archives: gq

GQ — In the mid-1800s, a Polish doctor inspecting laborers from a local salt mine started noticing something consistent and strange: Everybody looked fantastic. Clear skin, no rashes. No colds, no flu, no coughs. People were breathing just fine—not even fine but perfectly. For sweaty Polish miners who spent their days underground hacking away with axes, this was a surprise.

GQ (Sept. 2017) — I like my wife very much, and I operate under the assumption that she likes me, but our past few months have been made immeasurably better by the manner in which, come nightfall, she and I have nothing to do with each other.

We hadn’t always slept apart. For years I would lie awake beside my wife and seethe at her perpetual pillow-shuffling, the icy light of her Words with Friends game, and, most significantly, her alarm clock, which announced itself every morning at 5:45 A.M. and was followed by her hammering the snooze button with such vigor that I began to suspect it wasn’t a snooze button at all but a switch that summoned waffles and back rubs from some other, better husband. She, meanwhile, suffered through a partner—i.e., me—who apparently snores like an elephant giving birth inside a Dumpster.

Our nightly war fueled a mutual resentment that welled up like water in a dam. Then, one morning, everything burst. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” she said, staring into the first of her multiple coffees, “but I can’t sleep with you.”

GQ — Of all the fad diets to come down the pike, the one we never saw coming was the simplest: Just don’t eat food. The idea of intermittent fasting (i.e., regimented periods of eating and not eating) has gone mainstream. Fans say it works by training your body to burn its fat reserves. It’s also said to decrease the risk of cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. And, of course, caloric abstinence is the most cost-effective diet in history. The main downside is the grueling first two weeks, when you’ll probably quit.

Like this:

GQ — Men today are always searching for a miracle cure—the magical face serum that reverses aging, the world’s lather-iest shaving cream. We went searching for the best source, and the miracle is: We found it. It was right past Auntie Anne’s Pretzels!

GQ — Late last year, the former guitarist for Guns N’ Roses propped up his camera phone, pressed the record button, produced a cherry-red coffin-shaped box and put its contents directly in his mouth.

The box contained a tortilla chip—one single chip—made from the dust of the Carolina Reaper, the hottest pepper on Earth, designed solely to obliterate the senses. In the video, the guitarist, Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal, places the shard of fire on his tongue as his wife of 27 years, Jen, does the same. Incredibly, Jen smiles. Bumblefoot, meanwhile, looks like somebody hit self-destruct on his face.

“If you like pain, you’re gonna like this,” he says, through breaths that grow increasingly panting. “It’s still burning. I’m feeling kind of sweaty.” He grimaces, forces some smiles, the fire inching back up his throat. A few minutes in, he absently brushes his right eye, which, because his immune system works, immediately swells shut. “I no longer have use of my eye,” he says, half-laughing through tears and mucus. Jen, next to him, continues to seem totally fine. A guy who spent eight years with Axl Rose as his boss is getting slaughtered by a tortilla chip while his wife is like, eh, whatever.

This episode goes on for six minutes. Bumblefoot excuses himself to flush his eye with water—which obviously doesn’t work—until the fire finally dies down enough for the couple to record an outro. “Paqui chips,” he says, sweating and one-eyed, “Thank you very much for destroying my life for the next half-hour.”

GQ — So I have this friend who snores like a psychopath. Enough that people bitch about it from neighboring rooms. Enough that his wife is basically scouting quieter replacement husbands. Enough that his son jokes that he sounds like elephant giving birth inside a metal garbage can.

But this friend, see, he knows that it’s hard to make lifestyle adjustments while unconscious. He also sleeps pretty well, so he wouldn’t even worry about it, if not for the complaints from people he likes. So this friend, while awake, went to the source: a PhD named Michael Breus, who happens to be a fellow at the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. “Snoring is all about the airway,” Breus told my friend. “It’s turbulence. It’s like when you stick your thumb over a hose in the garden and water shoots out faster. When any part of the breathing passage becomes more narrow—your sinuses, trachea, any floppy tissue—you’ll snore.” Here’s how my friend learned to calm that turbulence down.

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GQ — Mattress shopping is the worst shopping, unless you enjoy driving to the nearest low-rent strip mall and lying down fully clothed in the company of commission-starved salesmen. So when I needed a new mattress recently to replace my 12-year-old Sealy Posturepedic Plush Pillowtop (which I purchased from Dr. Seuss, apparently), I was delighted to find that the whole game has changed, thanks to online retailers.

GQ — As the captain of The Daily Show, Trevor Noah is required to keep strict and constant vigilance on what people seem to keep referring to as “the presidential election.” Because Noah must keep his mind and body sharp enough to not only absorb such lunacy but write jokes and soothe people’s minds about it, his job takes what Donald Trump might refer to as “stamina.” So he’s adopted a workout philosophy that’s not so much about daily gym visits and hourly kale smoothies but integrating what he can into his schedule. Here’s how Noah stays in peak news-skewering shape.

GQ — The Olympics are a showcase for peak physical magnificence, a relentless Tinderfest (you think you don’t stand out in a bar? Try navigating a village full of gymnasts and swimmers in Rio de Fucking Janeiro), and proof that we are surrounded by golden sports gods and goddesses who can totally swim in emerald-green water and not die. So it’s a little weird that they’re all losing their shit over free Big Macs.

Indeed, aside from Biles, Ledecky, Bolt, Phelps, and the Slovakian canoe slalom team (REPRESENT, MY PEOPLE!), the clear winner in Rio this year is McDonald’s, which established a fully functional calorie tent in the Olympic Village to offer free Big Macs, McGriddles, and dirt-cheap loaves of meat to hungry Olympians looking to kick-start just a littttttle bit of body decline.